Ideals, determinants, and straightening: proving and using lower bounds for polynomial ideals

We show that any nonzero polynomial in the ideal generated by the r × r minors of an n × n matrix X can be used to efficiently approximate the determinant. Specifically, for any nonzero polynomial f in this ideal, we construct a small depth-three f -oracle circuit that approximates the Θ(r 1/3 ) × Θ(r 1/3 ) determinant in the sense of border complexity. For many classes of algebraic circuits, this implies that every nonzero polynomial in the ideal generated by r × r minors is at least as hard to approximately compute as the Θ(r 1/3 ) × Θ(r 1/3 ) determinant. We also prove an analogous result for the Pfaffian of a 2n × 2n skew-symmetric matrix and the ideal generated by Pfaffians of 2r × 2r principal submatrices. This answers a recent question of Grochow [Gro20, Conjecture 6.3] about complexity in polynomial ideals in the setting of border complexity. Leveraging connections between the complexity of polynomial ideals and other questions in algebraic complexity, our results provide a generic recipe that allows lower bounds for the determinant to be applied to other problems in algebraic complexity. We give several such applications, two of which are highlighted below.